NANO

NAME

nano - Nano's ANOther editor, an enhanced free Pico clone

SYNOPSIS

nano[+LINE] [options] [file]

DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the nano command.

nano is a small, free and friendly editor which aims to replace
Pico, the default editor included in the non-free Pine package. Rather
than just copying Pico's look and feel, nano also implements some
missing (or disabled by default) features in Pico, such as "search and
replace" and "go to line number".

OPTIONS

+LINE

Places cursor at LINE on startup.

-B (--backup)

When saving a file, back up the previous version of it to the current
filename suffixed with a ~.

-D (--dos)

Write file in DOS format.

-F (--multibuffer)

Enable multiple file buffers, if available.

-H (--historylog)

Log search and replace strings to
~/.nano_history
so they may be stored for later editing, if nanorc support is
configured.

-I (--ignorercfiles)

Don't look at
$SYSCONFDIR/nanorc
or
~/.nanorc,
if nanorc support is available.

-K (--keypad)

Do not use the ncurses keypad() call unless necessary. Try this flag if
you find that the arrow keys on the numeric keypad do not work for you
under nano.

-M (--mac)

Write file in Mac format.

-N (--noconvert)

Disable automatic conversion of files from DOS/Mac format.

-Q str (--quotestr=str)

Set the quoting string for justifying. The default is
"^([ \t]*[|>:}#])+" if regular expression support is available, or
"> " otherwise.

-R (--regexp)

Enable regular expression matching for search strings, as well as
\n subexpression replacement for replace strings, if available.

Specify a specific syntax highlighting from the
.nanorc
to use, if available.

-c (--const)

Constantly show the cursor position.

-h (--help)

Display a summary of command line options.

-i (--autoindent)

Indent new lines to the previous line's indentation. Useful when editing
source code.

-k (--cut)

Enable cut from cursor to end of line with ^K.

-l (--nofollow)

If the file being edited is a symbolic link, replace the link with
a new file, do not follow it. Good for editing files in
/tmp,
perhaps?

-m (--mouse)

Enable mouse support (if available for your system).

-o dir (--operatingdir=dir)

Set operating directory. Makes nano set up something similar to a
chroot.

-p (--preserve)

Preserve the XON and XOFF sequences (^Q and ^S) so they will be
caught by the terminal.

-r cols (--fill=cols)

Wrap lines at column cols. By default, this is the width of the
screen, less eight. If this value is negative, wrapping will occur at
cols columns from the right of the screen, allowing the wrap point
to vary along with the screen width if resized.

-s prog (--speller=prog)

Enable alternative spell checker command.

-t (--tempfile)

Always save changed buffer without prompting. Same as Pico -t option.

-v (--view)

View file (read only) mode.

-w (--nowrap)

Disable wrapping of long lines.

-x (--nohelp)

Disable help screen at bottom of editor.

-z (--suspend)

Enable suspend ability.

-a, -b, -e, -f, -g, -j

Ignored, for compatibility with Pico.

INITIALIZATION FILE

nano will read initialization files in the following
order:
$SYSCONFDIR/nanorc,
then
~/.nanorc.
Please see
nanorc(5)
and the example file nanorc.sample which should be provided with
nano.

NOTES

nano will try to dump the buffer into an emergency file in some
cases. Mainly, this will happen if nano receives a SIGHUP or
SIGTERM or runs out of memory, when it will write the buffer into a file
named
nano.save
if the buffer didn't have a name already, or will add a ".save" suffix
to the current filename. If an emergency file with that name already
exists in the current directory, ".save" and a number (e.g. ".save.1")
will be suffixed to the current filename in order to make it unique. In
multibuffer mode, nano will write all the open buffers to the
respective emergency files.

HOMEPAGE

SEE ALSO

AUTHOR

Chris Allegretta <chrisa@asty.org>, et al (see
AUTHORS
and
THANKS
for details). This manual page was originally written by Jordi Mallach
<jordi@sindominio.net>, for the Debian GNU system (but may be
used by others).